6th August 2020 Nebosh set the 1st Open Book Exam. This only applied to the NG1 / NGC1 unit which at the time was the management paper for the Nebosh General Certificate, Nebosh Fire Certificate and Nebosh Construction Certificate qualification.
What is an “Open Book Exam”?
This is where the delegate can access their course material and other resources to aid them in answering the questions, much like you would in a real life scenario as a health and safety practitioner. For the Nebosh exams (except for the Diploma DN1 which also has an additional set of task to complete) the exam has an in depth case study of a workplace with details of either a near miss/accident/incident and/or examples of poor H&S management. There are then a series of tasks to answer which relate to the case study.
Does this make the exam easier and do I still need to study the course material?
The exam is definitely as challenging as the previous invigilated exams, and delegates still need to study the course syllabus to the same level as before. The Open Book Exam is designed to test delegate’s knowledge and understanding of the syllabus and the answers can’t simply be “copied and pasted” from the course material or internet. For health and safety training Nebosh have ensured their qualifications have retained the high standard and industry recognition of excellence.
Now in 2025 the General , Fire, Construction and Environment Certificates and the Nebosh Health and Safety Diploma are all fully Open Book (some with the additional work based practical submitted electronically) so we will take a look back at what was happening in 2020 and why the exam format change, how this change developed across the qualifications, what the change meant to delegates and how it affected pass rates.
In the beginning of 2020 the world changed as the Covid virus spread globally and for the majority of UK residents this was their 1st major disaster experienced. Little did we know as we celebrated the New Year on 1st January 2020 that we were about to be confronted with lock downs we never thought would be possible, schools closed, roads empty, terminology only used in movies such as “Lock down”, “Social distancing”, “Furlough”. At Cambridge Safety our first challenge was that we were half way through a General Certificate and Diploma classroom course with no idea when we would be able to restart face to face classes. At this time the exams were classroom invigilated written exams, so even if we did dive into the new world of teaching online via Zoom or Teams, we didn’t know when the delegates would be able to take their exams. Then Nebosh made an announcement we weren’t expecting, they were changing the NG1/NGC1 exam into an Open Book Exam. We had many questions about how this would work, how do we keep the quality and standard of the qualification, what impact will this have on the end results?
Quite simply, the exams for all of the qualifications are definitely not any easier, Nebosh have put in place a wide range of protocols to ensure the delegates work is their own, and the overall results rate hasn’t altered. The only change we have really noticed is that Diploma delegates, particularly Diploma Distance Learning, have been more successful in completing the qualification as the exams are more frequent so they don’t necessarily have to wait 6 months and then have all 3 units at one time.
Back to 2020 – were there teething problems? Of course there were – this was a massive change for both Nebosh and the Learning Partners over a very short period of time. Was it necessary? Absolutely – with hindsight had Nebosh not changed to an Open Book Format there would have been a serious delay to the teaching of Health and Safety which would have had a long term impact of a shortfall of high level health and safety practitioners. The biggest challenge for Nebosh was a website that could support such a high volume of delegates logging in at exactly the same time to access the exam (this was for national and international delegates), and we did have one exam that crashed the system and delegates couldn’t log on, but Nebosh responded swiftly with extending the exam period on the day to allow all delegates a fair amount of time and then putting in a lot of time and effort into resolving the problem which has not occurred since.
As a Learning Partner we had to develop a lot of new procedures and a new timetable to accommodate the different processes involved and the increase in frequency of exams. We also had a new skill to learn – the “Closing Interview” for Certificate level and “Professional Discussion” for the Diploma delegates. This is one small part of the overall malpractice procedure Nebosh have developed to ensure the integrity of the Nebosh qualification is upheld.
Once the NG1/NGC1 OBE was working well, the other certificate and Diploma exams followed suit, this involved new syllabus and exam format for each qualification within 1 year, (including the removal of the NGC1 unit) – Jackie undertook a huge amount of work to update all of our material to the new syllabuses and then the admin team to integrate this into our procedures and website resources.
What has been the delegates experience of the new style exams?
During the closing interviews delegates have given feedback on their experience of the OBE, some preferred the old style “time restricted invigilated in an exam room”, but overall delegates have appreciated that the new OBE focuses on a delegates ability to take the information they have learnt and apply it to a case study, using resources where necessary, which is more true to real life working, rather than a reliance on being able to memorise facts and write quickly. Certainly delegates where English is not their 1st language, and delegates with learning difficulties eg dyslexia, ADHD, have a more positive experience of this style of exam, which supports encouraging a wide range of individuals within the Health and Safety community.
To Finish Off
Overall the implementation of the open book exam has been successful and future proofed the industry against any further disruptions caused by pandemics, severe weather conditions or any other unforeseen circumstances, to ensure we continue training employees on the best standards of health and safety and working towards the safest places of work as possible!
Alongside the changes to the exam format, for Cambridge Safety the pandemic brought about some positive changes as well – the biggest being the recording of over 500 You Tube videos for our delegates to access, this has been a great resource for all of our delegates but particularly when our classroom delegates miss a day of training, find a topic difficult to understand so can rewatch the presentation, and we have also had really positive feedback from delegates who have learning difficulties including dyslexia, and where English is not their 1st language. We also made an electronic revision pack for each qualification with true and false quizzes and a mock exam to complete and have marked with feedback so all open learning delegates and those re-sitting their exams have access to the revision material instead of having to attend a classroom session at our centre in Peterborough. These resources along side our podcasts and Take 5 videos have created an extensive resource of learning materials for all of our delegates resulting in fantastic end results and always achieving above the Nebosh national average!
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